“What’s he talking about?” Nora asks more loudly. Still no one looks at her. Signal interference spatters the screen with red pixels. She hears low laughter in the girls’ restroom.
“What is our reaction to that? How can we understand it? In the space of a few decades we’ve suffered nearly every catastrophe we ever imagined and now, with civilization already on the brink, we’re given this. Our friends and families, all the casualties of all our conflicts, getting up again to keep the tragedy flowing. To consummate it.”
The signal sputters and cuts off, detaching the two men’s heads, scrambling their faces in a flurry of pixels and ear-piercing noise. Someone clicks the TV off and there is silence.
“What’s he talking about?” Nora shouts, but no one answers her. Her friends stand with their backs to her, staring at the blank screen, unblinking. A warbling hum begins to fill the room.
She glances out the window and sees her baby brother playing alone in the mud of the playground. A gaunt black wolf stands behind him, tongue lolling out, grinning. Her teachers and teammates stare at the blank TV, ignoring her screams as the wolf’s jaws stretch open.
• • •
“ {gn=e worNora!”
Her eyes snap open just in time to see Addis shutting the window curtain and dashing back to the bed, his eyes wide with panic.
“It’s okay, Addy,” she murmurs groggily.
“There’s a…there’s a—”
“I know. He was there last night. He can’t get in.”
She climbs out of bed and approaches the window, fingering the Colt’s trigger. She opens the curtain. The big man doesn’t seem to have moved all night.
“Go away!” she shouts, her face mere inches from his. No reaction. She waves her hands in aggressive shooing motions. “Get the f**k out! Leave us alone!”
Nothing.
She raises the pistol and points it at his forehead.
Addis jams his hands against his ears. But before Nora can give her brother his next lesson on the brutality of modern life, the man pulls back. His expression remains blank, but he backs away from the window and steps aside like a gentleman holding a door for a lady. It unnerves Nora more than she would have expected.
“Get your stuff,” she says to her brother, still aiming the gun.
“Aren’t you gonna shoot him?”
“Not yet.”
“Why?”
“Because he backed up.”
“But isn’t he a zombie?”
Nora hesitates before answering. “I don’t know what he is. No one does.”
She slips her backpack on and undoes the door locks, keeping her eyes and pistol trained on the man through the window. Addis huddles close behind her, gripping his hatchet.
“We’re coming out!” she yells, having no idea if the man still understands language. “You stay away from us or I’m shooting you!”
She opens the door a crack. He doesn’t move. She opens it the rest of the way and steps out, keeping him firmly sighted. “All clear, Addis?”
Addis runs to each corner of the motel and peeks around, securing the perimeter like a seasoned police officer. His father taught him at least one thing well.
“All clear.”
Nora walks backward toward him, not taking her eyes off the big man’s empty silver gaze.
“Nora?” Addis says quietly.
“What.”
“You should shoot him.”
She glances back at her brother to make sure the voice really came from him.
“Auntie Shirley said we’re not supposed to let them stay alive. If you don’t kill him he’s gonna kill someone else.”
“I know what Auntie said.” She keeps her sights on the center of the man’s forehead. “And Dad said don’t waste bullets on other people’s problems.”
“But Dad is mean.”
Her teeth are grinding. The gun is getting slippery in her hands. The big man watches her calmly, standing a safe twenty feet away, arms hanging at his sides.
She doesn’t want to shoot him.
She doesn’t know what possible good it could do to spare his life, but she knows she wants to. Is it as simple as empathy? That uniquely human reluctance to kill? It can’t be. She’s killed two people since her fourteenth birthday. Yes, she did it in self-defense to protect her family, but does that really matter? Is the difference between killing with satisfaction and killing with horror nothing more than context?
“I can look away,” Addis offers.
“What?”
“If you don’t want to shoot him ‘cause of me, I can look away when you do it.”
“Addis, just shut up, okay?”
He shuts up. There is a long silence.
“Hey!” Nora shouts at the man. “You’re infected right? You’re not just mute or sleepwalking or something? You’re capital-D Dead?”
No response. As if she needs one. As if his skin, his eyes, and the gaping wound in his stomach weren’t enough. She knows exactly what he is, but…
“Hey,” she almost pleads, knowing she is talking to no one, nothing. “Can you understand me?”
He nods.
Nora gasps. Her gun lowers.
She hears the creak of a door behind her and whirls around. A naked woman is standing three feet from her face, skin gray and mottled and split open in places, head tilted to the side, a beard of brown blood running down her mouth and neck. Her jaw creaks open and she moans, a hollow sound of pain and hunger, and she lunges.
Nora is a good shot. She has excellent spatial recognition and eye-hand coordination, making her naturally talented with guns. But she is not a killer. She is not a war vet, she is not trained by the Army or National Guard or even local militias. The art of murder is not embedded in her muscle memory and she is not immune to shock. So when this drooling wreck of rotting flesh surges toward her, she doesn’t calmly fire a round into its frontal lobe and walk away. She screams like a teenage girl and empties all seven rounds into its chest.